Tag Archives: Vermont Pub/Brewery

My latest featured article for RateBeer’s The HopPress… posted on Saturday, November 6th.

As I have said before, Vermont is Beer Country! Back in 2009 the Brewers Association declared Vermont as having the highest per capita concentration of breweries of any state in the land (Breweries Per Capita). This awesome designation was awarded based on the 2008 Vermont census and the presence of, at the time, 19 craft beer breweries within the state’s borders. That’s 19 breweries for Vermont’s 621,270 citizens or about one brewery for every 32,698 Vermonters. Breweries have come and gone since that time and, as a result, Vermont has added a net of 2 new breweries, for a current total of 21. With approximately the same population as in 2008, this means that there is now about 1 brewery for every 29,584 Vermonters. I think that it is very unlikely that any state has surpassed this outstanding people/brewery ratio since these figures were last published.

Some of my fellow HopPress writers have presented a tour of the breweries in their own states, so I thought that it would be only right that I do the same for Vermont. With there being 21 of them, I will not spend the time in this article attempting to cover all of them; that would end up being quite long and pretty boring. Instead I will talk, first, about the 7 breweies located in only one region of the state… the greater northwestern portion of the state, which I will call the “Burlington” region, named after our largest city (pop. 38,647 in 2009).

My latest featured article for RateBeer’s The HopPress… posted on Saturday, October 30th.

Like most modern American holidays, Halloween is more than a little over-commercialized and (I am at risk here of sounding like an old fogey) it seems to have lost some of the “mystique” and fun that it had when I was much younger. The once simple act of dressing up like a ghost (my favorite) and merrily going house to house gathering “treats” has been severely tainted with the risks and the potential dangers that type of behavior now carries. Wither the innocence of days gone by…

Lamenting aside, for me there are still some significant benefits to be gained from the celebration of Halloween, even if those do not much resemble the days of my youth. I am not talking about dressing up and going out to party it up all night with friends, although that can definitely still be enjoyable. I am, instead, talking about sampling some of the Halloween “themed” beers that are available these days. I am going to steer clear of the pumpkin beers, since those are focused more on the autumn season and there is plenty in the media about those beers these days. Instead I am going to hit some of the beers that either because of their name or what they taste like could be associated with Halloween.